Motorola Droid News

Sony Ericsson’s landmark first Android smartphone will miss the holidays of 2009 in favour of a more stable handset due in the first quarter of 2010. That seems like a prudently tactful move from the 3rd largest mobile phone maker on the planet. Rather than suffer the same embarrassment releasing a half-baked p990i a few years back, company engineers will most likely be busy during the holidays addressing the complaints about the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 prototype that was both a disappointment and a delight among smartphone pundits during its official launch in early November.

Getting Rachel to Work

Attending a brief presentation from Sony Ericsson, the new handset delivered on some but was short on others. It does work, but not at its best. The Xperia 10 is your most talked about Xperia X3 speculated on in many online mobile sites since its production leaked online by stealthy enterprising bloggers.

The Rachel UI has been renamed the UX – short for User eXperience. The specimen we played with has a sluggish Rachel; it had no multitouch capability we expected from high end smartphones in this class and its battery life was just pathetic. Sony Ericsson seems to be stuck with it for all the investment in manhours it has made.

Porting it to the newer Android 2.o seemed a more astute option as most other Android makers are already using it.  But Sony Ericsson is sticking with the older 1.6 version.  We hope the UX can do wonders on it in time for its Q1 2010 launch the way the new 2.0 version is doing for the new Android phones coming out during the holidays.

In the meantime, the delightful aspects of the X10 was certainly noticed and if Sony Ericsson can deliver on its promising features, the first few months of 2010 is sure to see a real Xperia winner

Elegance and Sophistication

It’s common to see flagship handsets as bulky and monstrous as makers try to put every conceivable features in them.  But the Xperia X10’s upscale features are housed in a slim glossy black body dominated by a large 4” capacitive touchscreen that is sure to appeal to the fashion conscious techies in the market. For sure it has its equally competent and beautiful rivals in the Nokia X3, LG BL40, Motorola Droid/Milestone and HTC HD2, to mention some.  But this is a Sony Ericsson’s first Android smartphone the market is waiting for.

Running on the powerful Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, the X10 ‘s hardware specs is nothing short of remarkable. With 3G and HSPA for fast internet surfing and downloading, and apart form its 4” display, you get an upscale 8.1 megapixel autofocusing camera with LED flash,  8x digital zoom, face recognition and VGA video recording at a cinema quality 30fps. This makes the X10 one of the best camera smartphones the will launch early next year. It the usual WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR and A2DP, capable media players,  a stereo FM radio, microSD support for up to 32GB, TV out and 3.2mm headphone port.  Video calls on 3G are supported by a secondary VGA camera in front.

Availability

Expansys predicted a January release for the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, but we won’t be surprised if it happens later in the quarter. Pricing information is not yet available but as any Android phone goes, and this one is a flagship Android phone, we expect the X10 to carry and hefty price tag.

Unbeknownst to many in the mobile phone community, there’s a mobile phone company called Emblaze Mobile based in Israel that is poised to do battle with entrenched smartphone makers starting this year.

It’s a nine-year old company that operates under the group umbrella of Emblaze Ltd., a small Anglo-Israeli IT company in the business of providing software and communication solutions since 1994.

A Little History

Emblaze Mobile has been specializing on designing cutting-edge technologies for mobile telephony since 1998 even before getting incorporated.   It has been marketing low cost feature phones that commands a fairly good size of the Israeli and Middle Eastern markets, especially its Touch & which was also marketed in Europe in 2006.

Emblaze Mobile is now known as Else Ltd shifting to the new name after announcing its Emblaze Mobile First Else smartphones back in November 2009.  Emblaze Mobile embarked on the “Monolith” project that had a Japanese company as a strategic partner, Access, which is one of the world’s leading providers of mobile software solutions and is best known for its net browser NetFront as well the Access Linux OS used by many companies worldwide.

It is also the maker of Garnet OS derived from the Palm OS.  The joint project produced a unique Access Linux-based platform called Else Intuition.

High End Features

Finally out from its classified Monolith product, the new smartphone’s all-black slab 116 x 57 x 13mm body comes out as an unabashedly inspired design form the monolith in the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey.  What sets its Else Intuition OS apart is its gesture-controlled UI that is similar to what the iPhone has but goes a step farther with more menus controllable by thumb gestures and a unique dial-up graphic menu calls “sPlay.”

In addition, it has complete multitasking capability and a media store available for Apps developers on the new platform as Emblaze will be releasing is API together with the handset.  It’s good to know that for a company starting out to venture into smartphones, it recognizes this early that a successful smartphone needs a good online apps store

Demoed at a launch event in Japan last December and launched in London this week, the First Else looks like a Nokia N900 but without the QWERTY keypad. It’s designed to be operated with just one hand courtesy of its capacitive touchscreen and a persistent display of controls on the right side of the screen.

What immediately strikes you is its 3.5” Wide-VGA (854 x 480) display and a high end 5 megapixel autofocus camera with image stabilization.   It’s a quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone on 2G with UMTS/3.5G and HSDPA data connectivity, WiFi, GPS, accelerometer and proximity sensors, Bluetooth 2,0 and USB 2.0.

Internal memory comes at 16 GB though a 32 GB version is being readied.  Neither version seems capable of microSD expandability. It is powered by the same Texas Instrument OMAP 3430 processor powering the iPhone 3Gs, Motorola Droid and Nokia N900.  Incidentally, these three smartphones would be its main competitors.

Availability

The Emblaze Mobile First Else Linux smartphone is expected to reach European markets by the second quarter of 2010 and will be making its product debut in the UK.  Emblaze Mobile is already negotiating with the major mobile network providers in Europe and the US.  Pricing information has yet to reach the public but this is now affordable handset. With its feature set and a remarkably unique OS, expect this to compete in the high end upscale markets.

Launched in London this week is the new Emblaze Mobile First Else smartphone.  It doesn’t ring as loud a bell as an HTC or Blackberry smartphone, but you have the promise of a very capable and remarkably unique handset that, if the Israel-based Emblaze Mobile company plays its cards well, could give the major players a run for their money.

The Smartphone Challenge

Emblaze is not new to the business as it’s been there over the last decade, providing its markets with low cost featured phones and providing mobile telephone technologies to other companies as an OEM.  Recently, it embarked on an ambitious project called “Monolith” teaming up with Japanese Access, known for its NetFront browser and co-developer for the Palm OS.

The result of this 2-year joint technical collaboration is another new Access-flavored Linux-based operating system called Else Intuition to run the new First Else smartphone sporting a slab design inspired by the monolith slab in Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001:A Space Odyssey.

The challenge for the Emblaze Mobile First Else is convincing the tech savvy smartphone market that it is as good, if not better, than the emerging Android smartphones sweeping the market. The world of smartphone may still have room for the new Else Intuition side by side with the Android and other platforms that are slowly losing favour in the market.

For sure, the First Else’s UI is nothing like any UI in the market today. It sports a unique menu set arranged in a dial-up-like fashion and is designed to be operated with just one hand courtesy of its gesture-sensitive multi-touch capacitive touchscreen and a persistent control points on the right side of its large 3.5-inch WVGA display.

The new handset is not wanting of upscale features found only in expensive smartphones.  You get a 3/3.5G data connectivity on a quad band GLSM handset powered by the same Texas Instrument OMAP 3430 engine that is found in the iPhone 3Gs, Nokia N900 and the Motorola Droid.

It has WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, mini USB 2.0, GPS, accelerometer and primary sensors 3.5mm headphone jack, and a high end 5-megapixel autofocus camera with image stabilization. There’s an internal Flash memory of either 16 GB or 32 GB but without expandability options.  It has a generous 1450 mAh LI battery but the talk times remain unreleased

Lastly, Emblaze Mobile knows the value of having an online apps store like what iPhone has.  It knows too well that iPhone’s success has been largely due to its hundreds of thousands of apps and games downloadable to make the handset as exciting to use as it was when taken out of the box the first time.  It has readied its apps store with an API it is releasing with the handset for developers to start developing mobile application software on its new platform.

Availability

Emblaze Mobile has recently renamed itself as Else Ltd.  It can be a bit awkward referring to the new smartphone as Else’s First Else.  But that’s just how it should be called.  It is expected to debut in the UK this spring and made available to the European and US markets thereafter.  Else Ltd is already talking with various major network providers in Europe and the US.  Pricing has yet to be announced though we expect this to be anything affordable.

Just as the year is opening to a slew of Android smartphones emerging as the platform of choice among the world’s leading mobile phone makers, there’s another new and exciting platform on a new smartphone carrying a radical look and feel.

It comes from an Anglo-Israeli mobile phone maker that has yet to make a dent in the mobile community.  Enter the Emblaze Mobile First Else smartphone. It is nothing like anything on the smartphone landscape.

Meeting the Challenge with Unique and Upscale Features

At first glance, there’s nothing striking about it.  It’s another of those black monoblock touchscreen slabs.  This time, it unabashedly gets inspiration from the monolith structure in Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Not surpassingly, it is the product of two years of a joint technical collaborative project called “monolith.”

On closer look, what came out of that project is a defining product from the Emblaze Mobile company with its First Else, it’s first foray into the smartphone world with a new Linux-based platform it calls Else Intuition. Its Japanese partner Access, known for its NetFront web browsers, Access Linux products and the Palm OS, made possible the new Else Intuition platform that brings gesture-controlled UI to a higher plane.

It is designed to be navigated with just one hand, the First Else sports a 3.5” Wide-VGA multitouch capacitive touchscreen with a persistent control menu on its rightmost screen edge that can be activated with your right hand.  You only need your thumb gestures to scroll and rotate its dial-up menu arrangement.

Its UI clearly shows that the smartphone world has room for another feature-rich OS that has all the promise of challenging the Android.  We hope to get hold of a trial unit and await the market verdict if indeed it is a serious Android challenger.  When it reaches the market, it will meet headlong with iPhone 3Gs, Motorola Droid and Nokia N900 as its main rivals.

Interestingly enough, the First Else is actually powered by the Texas Instrument OMAP 3430 processor that powers its rivals.  It would be a revelation to check whether the Else Intuition does a more competent job than the Android.

The upscale features are nothing new and are quite common in high ends smartphones.  Apart from a gorgeous capacitive display, you get the usual accelerometer for auto-rotate viewing consistent with the handset orientation.

There’s a proximity sensor for disabling touchscreen function when held to the ear in a call.  You bet a 5-megapixel autofocus camera with image stabilization as well.  The First Else is a 3G/3.5G UMTS phone with HSDPA and a quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE on 2G.  It has WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and A2DP, MiniUSB 2,0. 3.5mm headphone jack, GPS receiver and comes with either 16 GB or 32GB internal memory versions.

It doesn’t seem to support microSD expandability, though.  Talk times and standby times have not been published but we expect its 1450 mAh LI battery to be up to the task.

Availability

Emblaze Mobile is releasing an API together with the unit and this should populate its online app store which the company is readying in time for the market launch this spring.  It certainly knows the advantage of having an app store – a feature missed by many smartphone makers in the past.  The Emblaze Mobile First Elseis now known as the Else First Else, after the company recently changed its name to Else Ltd.

When Sony first announced the X10 in early November after spending some time on the rumour mill in online mobile communities, the world held its breath on what could have been the finest smartphone on the planet at that time.  But after a missed deadline, a missed Christmas and now a missed Chinese New Year, we’re still a patient lot, but it looks like the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 is now antique before coming out into its target markets.  That is really the danger when you officially announce a product and wait so long before it comes out.

You now have a Motorola Droid/Milestone, the Acer Liquid A1 and the HTC Bravo cum Google Nexus.  We’re not even talking of the non-Android smartphones that have taken the thunder right out of the XPERIA X10 promises.

At the recent Barcelona Mobile World Congress, we have become privy to an even more exciting bunch of Android phones using the latest Android Éclair like the HTC Desire, the Dell Mini 5 with a 5-inch display, the Samsung i8520 Halo, the Samsung i8250 Beam and the Garmin-Asus Nuvifone A50 slated to appear soon.

Sony has announced a couple of smartphones that sent eyebrows arching all the way to the roof – the Mini and Mini-Pro versions of the X10.  We are now wondering if the X10 will ever be out of the market.   None of the new X10 derivatives will run the new Éclair, but will stick it out with an antiquated UX-enhanced Android 1.6 platform.  It is clear that Sony wants to recoup and maximize the return on its developmental investments on it.

Getting Nostalgic About Its Features

It may be a good time to refresh our memories about how good the XPERIA X10 would have been had it been released as first promised.  With the smaller and less powerful X10-Mini and Mini-Pro out in the second quarter 2010, it would be interesting to finally see the X10 in all its glory before these two get out.

To begin with, the X10 aura begins with the promise of its multi-tasking Android 1.6 Donut that Sony extensively modified to sport a more impressive User eXperience or UX interface.  It was meant to run on the most powerful engine on the planet – the 1Gz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor that is now used in many smartphones. But with the march of technology, that won’t be for long.

Housed in a monoblock oozing with stylish panache and elegant touchscreen simplicity and weighing no more than the iPhone’s 135 grams, the X10 has the largest display for any Android phone – a 4-inch 16:9 aspect WideVGA capacitive touchscreen with a scratch-resistant surface.

Imaging comes as another superb specimen from the company’s Cybershot heritage. At 8.1 megapixels with face/smile detection, image stabilization, 8x digital zoom, WideVGA video recording at 30fps, photo-video light, geo-tagging from it’s A-GPS receiver and red-eye reduction, the X10 had it all when its competitors had only a few of these, never in one package. There are now better camera phones with 12 megapixel resolution or 720p video recording.

Other superb features on the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 are basically what you can expect from an upscale smartphone.  You get high speed data connectivity like 3G/HSDPA, WiFi 82.11 b/g with DLNA, and Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR and A2DP.  There’s a 1GB internal memory with microSD support for up to 16 GB, A-GPS with Wisepilot navigation, a digital compass with its magnetometer, Mediascape and Timescape apps and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Very few smartphones have elicited as much interest and awe as the announced Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 made early November last year.  Feature wise, it’s everything people expect an upscale smartphone is, other than the fact that it is the most powerful Android handset running on the fastest CPU at that time.

Sony has missed its promised launch date, missed the holidays, missed the Chinese New Year and missed Valentine – occasions when it would have been easier to let loose some wads of bills for a truly remarkable smartphone rumoured to cost above the €600 price point.   Is it now too late?  That may be a matter of perspective.

At the recent World Mobile Congress held in Barcelona, the second quarter of the year will rain down not a few Android smartphones that will eclipse any technological or aesthetic edge the X10 now enjoys, on paper.  It’s now nearly 4 months from the official announcement and you only have one more month for the promised 1st quarter 2010 release of the X10.

We were not entirely surprised at the MWC  that Sony would already be releasing two X10 derivatives in the Mini and Mini Pro smartphones sporting a slightly inferior set of features, like a smaller screen and less powerful CPUs but still using the same Android 1.6 Cupcake when all the others are using the 2.0/2.1 Éclair version already.

Revisiting its Features

But as the first Android smartphone from the one of the top five mobile phone leaders on earth, it’s a worth the wait. We only hope the next 4-5 weeks before the quarter ends will see the X10 coming out.  The handset is now in the Sony Ericsson website confirming much of the features we’ve known since its announcement. Its feature set is worth revisiting if only to rekindle our appetite for it.

The X10 is powered by the 1Gz Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon CPU now used in many high end smartphones.  Sony’s technical product edge here being eroded fast.
It runs on the older Android 1.6 Cupcake when its rivals in the same class are starting to use the newer 2.0/2.1 Éclair version. Nevertheless, the world is still eager what the Rachel or UX-tweaked Android can deliver.
There’s the Timescape and Mediascape which appears to integrate the various messaging and media options on the handset, respectively.
It has the jaw-dropping 4-inch WideVGA capacitive touchscreen with a scratch-resistant coating and an accelerometer for auto-rotate viewing.  At the moment, this makes the X10 the Android smartphone with the largest screen size with the Motorola Droid coming a close second at 3.7 inches.
Its 8-megapixel autofocus and touchfocus camera with LED flash remains challenged by only those new non-android phones having 12 megapixel cameras like the Samsung M8920.  But with its other features like video light, image stabilization, face/smile detection, 8x digital zoom,  WVGA video recording at 30fps,  geo-tagging from its GPS receiver and red-eye reduction, nothing comes close as having all the features in one package.

Everything else about the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10is as upscale as you can get with 3G/HSDPA, WiFi 82.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR and A2DP, a 1GB internal memory with microSD support for up to 16 GB, A-GPS with Wisepilot navigation, a digital compass with its magnetometer and 3.5mm headphone jack.

The smartphone industry is mainly driven by Apple’s market share growth that has been 10x higher than its competitors within the last year. On the other hand, Apple has faced tough competition by key smartphone manufacturers. For instance, Nokia sold approximately 18,441,000 units in the Q2 of 2009, and RIM (Blackberry) sold approximately 7,680,000 units. During the same period, Apple sold approximately 6,900,000 units. Other key players in the smartphone industry are HTC, Fujitsu, Sony and Motorola.

Android OS

For many consumers, the main competition is between the iPhone and the Android OS that was launched in the market in 2008. According to a survey conducted by ChangeWave, 4,068 consumers believe that Motorola Droid is a direct threat to the iPhone and also one of the best smartphones available on the market today due to the native support for Exchange, the unified contact list and the exceptional new mapping and navigation application from Google. Besides, 21% of respondents who plan to buy a smartphone within the next 3 months they would prefer a smartphone that features the Android OS.

However, in the Q4 of 2009 the Android OS was ranked second in consumer preferences among the key mobile operating systems, after iPhone OS which remains the number one choice for operating systems.

iPhone

If one needed to put a hierarchy in the needs of consumers that are targeted by smartphones, then the most important would be (1) handling phone calls including battery life and call quality; (2) sending text messages; (3) handling email; (4) navigating phone numbers; (5) featuring web browsing; and (6) featuring advanced customization. And the truth of the matter is that the iPhone performs well or even shines in all of the above.

Although competition is tough, the iPhone is currently the landmark of the smartphone industry, for the most part because it features amazing technological advancements. Without neglecting the fundamentals of a phone such as calling and texting, the iPhone offers the in-between extras of other higher priced phones such as web browsing and Bluetooth, and a unique 3.5″ touch screen that packs the device’s exceptional technology. The latest model of the iPhone, the iPhone 3GS, runs twice as fast as any 3G model, from switching apps to opening attachments and sending text messages, and has a longer battery life although high-speed networks need more power.

Android OS or iPhone?

One of the reasons that the iPhone will continue prevailing in 2010 is because the iPhone features the touch screen. The Android OS comes with a QWERTY slider keyboard that, no matter how good it is, it cannot have the same on demand, streamlined, glossy feel of the iPhone.

Another plus for the iPhone is that its advanced technology and high quality parts allow anyone to create and publish games and apps to the Internet for download, thus offering the ability to create a huge variety of apps specialized for the iPhone alone. This means that as the iPhone’s popularity increases, the developers of an application will enjoy greater earnings.

iPhone or any other competitor?

For its fiscal Q3, RIM reported $3.9 billion revenues, up 11% from fiscal Q2 and 41% from the Q3 of 2008. Net income for Q3 was $1.10 per share versus 69 cents in the Q3 of 2008. Research In Motion (RIM), the company behind the BlackBerry, delivered more than 10 million mobile communication devices during the Q3 alone. Besides, the company estimates an increase of 6.8% to its subscribers from 4.4 million to 4.7 million.

On the other hand, for many consumers and telecom analysts, RIM delivers short. If they do not rewrite their OS from scratch, they are likely to be left behind in the mobile OS battle and 2010 will be a critical year for them.

In conclusion, the iPhone is likely to dominate the market in 2010 as well. Although competition is tough, the RIM’s limitation to deliver on long-term and the fact that Android is still experimenting with Google being on the lead for entering its own branded phone, leaves iPhone on the top.